


In The Captain's Hand

by junko



Series: Chasing Demons [15]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Birthday, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-28
Updated: 2012-11-28
Packaged: 2017-11-19 17:50:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/575984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junko/pseuds/junko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Renji's birthday is off to a rough start.  Will the captain's note hold the key to turning it around?  (Part one of Renji's birthday gift)</p>
            </blockquote>





	In The Captain's Hand

**Author's Note:**

> Think of this as one of those annoying filler arcs before the main action starts up again. Though I do try to seriously tackle the question of why anyone from Rukongai _has_ a birthday in the first place....

Renji’s birthday was off to a rocky start. When he finally woke up, the sun was high in the sky. He felt too hot, like he’d oversleep by several hours. In fact, his stomach told him he’d missed breakfast. Sleep gummed his eyes. Their makeshift leash still dangled from his throat; the silk dug painfully in to bruised and raw skin. It felt like Captain Komamura had used his neck for a chew toy. In a word: he felt like shit.

Worst of all? He was alone.

Blearily blinking at the Byakuya-sized rumple left in the covers, Renji frowned at the note and pair of scissors on the captain’s pillow. For the moment, he left the scissors where they were and looked at the note. Byakuya’s perfect printing informed him that a Kuchiki cousin and her family had arrived unexpectedly early this morning with the replacement kenseikan and thus the captain would be unavailable until sometime after diner. Renji grunted unhappily at that, but he supposed the delivery of such a ridiculously expensive hairpiece came with a lot of pomp and circumstance. However, the last line of the note left him with a weird sort of fluttering in his stomach: “My evening is all yours.” Then, even more astonishingly, there were the words “Happy Birthday” and a hastily sketched heart followed by Byakuya’s name.

A _heart_?

Renji held it up to the light and looked at it from all angles. Was that fortuitously-shaped smudge or was it for real?

Whatever it was, it looked exactly like a heart.

No way. Sentiment from Byakuya?

Renji looked around the room wishing he had someone to confirm that this was actually Byakuya’s hand. But Renji could hardly imagine a scenario where Byakuya dictated ‘heart, Byakuya’ to Eishirō.

Renji took a moment to fold the note up neatly. Heart or smudge, Renji was going to keep this forever. After finding a spot for it in the pocket of his hakama, he picked up the scissors and got to work on the obi.

#

Renji ran into Rukia and Ichigo on his way to the quartermasters. Rukia all but jumped into his arms to give him a big hug, a kiss on the cheek, and a cheery, “Happy birthday!” It must have been his cringe as he set her back on her feet that made her start and say, “Good god, boy, what did you do to your neck?” Before he could stumble around awkwardly for an answer, she gave him an admonishing frown and wagged her finger at him, “Have you been practicing Hainawa again?”

Ichigo had been patting Renji’s back in a congratulatory way, and stopped. “What? What’s that?”

They’d stopped just outside of the Sixth Division’s quartermaster. The road was crowded with the lunch rush and they stood on the sidewalk in the shade of the small overhang over the door. The sun was bright enough, Renji had been squinting the whole walk from the estate. 

“A binding spell. Renji’s bakudō is as random as his kidō,” Rukia explained with a fond smile, leaning a shoulder against the wall. “You should tell Ichigo about the time you nearly strangled yourself in Academy!”

“I pretty sure you just did,” Renji muttered. To Ichigo’s bright, curious smile, Renji shrugged. “Crawling rope is a bitch when it backfires.”

“Dude,” Ichigo said. “That’s hilarious.”

Sure, in retrospect. At the time it had been a humiliating twenty minutes of trying to break the spell while the kidō instructor used Renji as ‘teaching moment.’ 

Rukia was frowning at Renji’s neck, “You should let Kira or someone take care of that. It looks nasty. You’re going to kill yourself one of these times, you idiot. You do remember that the harder you fight it, the tighter it gets, right?”

Ichigo punched him in the arm, “Renji can’t not fight it, can you, big guy?”

How true was that? Renji couldn’t help the blush the colored his cheek. He had to get out of this mortifying conversation. He cleared his throat with a cough. “Uh, look, I’ll catch up with you guys later.” He hooked his thumb at the quartermaster’s office just behind him, “I just need to pop in and get some replacement things.”

“We’ll wait,” Ichigo offered. “After that, I should buy you lunch or something for your birthday, huh?” 

Renji pulled on his ear, but he couldn’t come up with a good reason not to let him. “Fine,” he said. “I mean: great, that would be nice. Thanks.”

It was then that Renji noticed Rukia’s eyes had gone wide and her face paled. She’d spotted the obi tied around his shihakushô. Renji had needed something to keep his hakama up, and found just the thing under the captain’s bed. It was shimmering teal with pink butterflies on it.

#

Rukia left in the middle of lunch in a way that left no doubt in Renji’s mind that she was off to oversee the organization of a surprise party for him. He dutifully promised to ‘stop by’ the Thirteenth for nebulous and undisclosed, but important reasons in about an hour or so.

That left him and Ichigo slurping noodles together on rooftop overlooking the food vendor’s street. Ichigo sat with his feet dangling over the gutter, Zangestu in its customary spot, slung over his shoulder. It still seemed strange to Renji that this human interloper looked so much like a shinigami, sitting there in a shihakushô never issued by any division’s quartermaster. But, Ichigo was one of them now. Renji had heard talk of some kind of brand new title being made up for the kid—Substitute Soul Reaper, whatever that meant. How Ichigo got such an honor without ever going to Academy or enlisting in the Gotei, Renji didn’t know.

Ichigo had been glancing at Renji on and off during the meal, and finally blurted out, “So, uh, can I ask you something?” 

_Please let it not be advice on how to date Rukia._ “I guess. Sure.”

“You’re from the Rukongai, right?”

What kind of question was that? “That’s the understatement of the year,” Renji said. To Ichigo’s baffled expression, he sighed and said, “Yeah, I’m from the Rukongai. Inuzuri is almost as far out in it as you can go, why?”

“Maybe this is an indelicate question, but… uh, how can you have a birthday?”

“You mean because I’m dead?” Renji glanced at Ichigo. 

Ichigo nodded seriously. His face was pale, but his eyes were riveted to Renji’s, deeply curious. 

“August thirty-first is the best I can remember as the day I crossed over. I suppose I could have been in transition for a long time, but once you arrive they give you this thing that tells you what district you’re assigned to. I swear mine was date-stamped with today’s date, but who knows? I could be remembering something from a past life.” A lot about that time was murky, lost in a haze. But, Renji did recall staring at that chit miserably for days afterwards trying to fathom out if it was just bad luck that had caused him to be given this particular fate, or if he’d actually done something to deserve Inuzuri’s private hell. 

“So today is the anniversary of your death?” Ichigo seemed horrified by the idea. “Does that mean that right now, there’s someone, somewhere lighting incense for you or bringing flowers to your grave?”

“For me?” Renji snorted, “I doubt it.” 

For some reason that made Ichigo look even more stricken. “There should always be someone.”

“Not all the dead are mourned. When that shit Aizen dies, who’s going to cry?” Renji asked seriously, but then he clapped Ichigo on the back, “No matter who I was before, today is the day I started a new life, got a second chance. It’s my birthday. Moreover, I’m grateful to be here after all this time, still kicking. There’s plenty what aren’t. And, in my book, that’s reason enough to celebrate, you know?”

“Right,” Ichigo said with a wan smile. “Sorry.”

As they finished the rest of their noodles before heading over to the Thirteenth, Renji swore he heard Ichigo mutter a reminder to himself, “Temple offering on August thirty-first for Renji.”

#

Renji acted surprised when everyone shouted “Happy Birthday,” but, in fact, he was a little astonished by the turn-out and all the work Rukia and everyone had done on his behalf. 

Captain Ukitake had a pavilion set up on the grassy hillside near the back practice field of the Thirteenth's expansive grounds. There were balloons and streamers and party hats for everyone. A long table had been piled full of all sorts of treats—the majority of which were filled with red bean paste. They’d even brought in a vender to come in special to make fresh taiyaki. 

In fact, Renji was sitting on the grass greedily gobbling his third when the sound of bells alerted him to Kenpachi’s approach. Well, the soft jingle and the tremendous spiritual pressure and the constant wailing cry of the captain’s zanpakutō. Kenpachi lowered himself to the ground with a grunt. The captain looked comically frightening with the conical party hat perched among the spikes of his hair. “Good party, Abarai.”

Renji lifted a hand to gauge the time by the sun. “It’s a bit early for you, isn’t it, Taicho?”

“Funny,” Kenpachi said not sounding amused at all. He tore into a fish-shaped pancake of his own. 

The little pink-haired Yachiru appeared from over Kenpachi’s shoulder to dance around Renji happily while singing, “Happy Birthday to You!” She hadn’t even finished the first verse when she squealed and shouted, “Oh! Cake!”

Kenpachi watched her go in that vaguely sort of paternal way he had, and then apparently deciding she was fine, turned to Renji intently. Renji could feel his attention like a sledgehammer. “So,” he said, after a moment or two. “Fighting Kuchiki. What was that like?”

"She's scrappy as all hell, but I can take her most days," Renji said. 

"You're a riot, asshole," Kenpachi said. "I meant the pretty one."

“Painfully short,” Renji said with a lift of his shoulder. “There was a lot of shunpō, getting bound up and held down with kidō, tiny slicing blades, and big, giant pink bastards that nailed me to the ground. Oh, yeah... I did get him on one knee briefly. That rocked.”

“Ha!” Kenpachi’s grin was fearsome. “That's my boy.”

“No,” Renji said patting Zabimaru proudly, “Mine.”

“Huh. Yeah, you stink of bankai,” Kenpachi said as though sort of put off by the idea. “Like Ikkaku.”

Renji glanced over at Kenpachi, who’d gone back to surreptitiously keeping watch over Yachiru. For all his supposedly unorthodox methods, Kenpachi had the best track record of any captain in the Gotei. Two of his former subordinates were currently serving as lieutenants—and, though he’d never admit it, Yumichika easily classified as lieutenant strength, too. Both Renji and Ikkaku had achieved bankai. It seemed like the list when on an on. “Yeah, you know,” Renji said sincerely, “Thanks. I’d have been a different man without you.”

Kenpachi peered at him out of the corner of his one eye. “Eh, just do me a favor, would you? Hold that moment of Kuchiki on his knees in your head. You did it once, you can do it again. So don’t go believing his bullshit about breeding or that he’s above you. You let that break you; I’ll kick your ass.”

“Yes, sir,” Renji said with a smile.

Kenpachi pulled himself to his feet, “Oi, Yachiru! What are you doing? No one wants to see you pop out of that cake!”

#

Renji stayed at the Thirteenth until the sun started to set. He tried to offer to help clean up, but Ukitake and Rukia shooed him off. As he made his way back to the Sixth and the estate, he reflected on the fact that it had been a damn fine day so far. Kira had not only pulled himself from his dark office to come, but had also healed Renji’s neck. Even though he gave him a very sly, knowing look after laying his hands on Renji, Kira never said anything. Hisagi had come by with this guitar and plucked out almost all the cords to “Happy Birthday.” As Renji was leaving, Hisagi was still strumming away, sitting around a campfire Kyōraku had built and seemed to have gathered Orihime, Yumichika, and a few others as admirers. The only old friend who hadn’t been able to show up was Momo, of course, as she was still in the hospital ward.

A good day.

And, hopefully, the best was yet to come.

#

Renji waited nervously in front of the Kuchiki senkaimon, his and the captain’s hell butterfly making lazy circles overhead. The moon was starting to rise, and Renji was beginning to think Byakuya was going to ditch him after all. But, a hissing collapse of air into a vacuum signaled Byakuya’s flash step. The captain appeared suddenly, the only sign of his hurry, the flutter of haori and the gentle settling of forelocks once again separated by the bone-white kenseikan. “I was afraid I might never escape,” he said simply. “Are you ready?”

Renji gave a curt nod.

The guard at the gate stepped aside to let them pass. The shoji screen doors slid open on their own. As the next set of doors unlocked and they stepped through, Renji couldn’t help but remember that the last time the two of them had used this particular gate, it had been to retrieve Rukia. 

He kept up his professional demeanor all the way to the other side, but the second they set foot in the human world. Renji pulled the note from his pocket and waved it at Byakuya. “Is this seriously a heart?”

Byakuya looked affronted by the question. “Does it not look like one?”

“It’s a perfect rendition,” Renji said. 

“Then I fail to understand your confusion, Renji,” Byakuya said. “Would you prefer I sign my private notes you with ‘best regards’?”

Renji shook his head, and started in the direction of the storage units where Urahara supposedly had left their gigai. “I can’t believe you’re willing to leave a paper trail, Taicho. A person could file this in evidence at a fraternization trial.”

“A person could,” Byakuya mused seriously, coming up to walk beside Renji on the wide, deserted boulevard. The overhead lamps flickered as they passed beneath them. “I suppose this means I trust you with my heart.”

Renji sputtered, faltering in his step. It was a clever pun, but also shockingly… sentimental. Renji glanced at Byakuya, who’d stopped when he did. The captain, of course, held his head high, but stared at the ground. His cold, elegant features impassive, impossible to read. 

First the note, and now this? 

Renji’s face split into a wide grin. _Best. Day. Ever._

“Come on,” Renji said, taking the captain’s hand in his, “I want to take you dancing.”

**Author's Note:**

> Bodes well for our boys, don't you think? Part two is on its way ASAP!


End file.
